Chairman

Hon. Senator Prof Dr. Prasop Ratanakorn (THAILAND)

I would like to talk about the survey that was performed in the Philippines las t year. I will be talking about the Philippines on the theme of urbanization an d development, but before going into this subject, I would like to discuss a ge neral subject.

I assume many of you have already seen. The State of World Population 1996, pub lished last year by UNFPA. It is an annual report on the world population prepa red by UNFPA that focuses on urbanization and shows the level of UN's concern r egarding urbanization. I will talk mainly about urbanization in the Philippines today, but this UNFPA report shows that urbanization is an extremely important issue in considering the population issue not only on a national level but on a global level. As this is an excellent report that examines the issue in a very comprehensive manner and discusses how population is increasing in urban areas, what the ideal size of cities and population distribution should be and how urb an areas need to establish link with rural areas, I highly recommend that you r ead it.

As I mentioned just now, we need to focus our attention on global urbanization, but few people have taken up this subject. It is not just the issue of urbaniza tion a new situa-tion called globalization of urbanization is emerging. One out of every two persons in the world will be living in cities in the near future. Ii is predicted that half of the popu-lation in the developing countries will b e concentrated in cities by the early part of the next century. If that happens , what will happen to future society? It will give rise to an unprecedented soc iety of numerous extremities. People who leave rural areas to live in cities wi ll be working in non-agricultural industries or service industry, which means t hat their lifestyle will be changed completely. This, in turn, will change the industrial structure as well as the values. Thus the issue of urbanization is o ne of the most impor-tant issues that will have to be addressed as we approach the next century, and the issue is not that of a distant future but an impendin g one. This is a situation that will be occur-ring at an unprecedented level in a few years from now. Therefore, when I discuss the issue of urbanization, plea se keep in mind that the issue is universal and that it is not lim-ited to the example of the Philippines.

I think you have a gray book entitled "Survey on Urbanization and Development i n Asia--the Philippines" among the materials that were handed out to you. Last year, we con-

　

　

　

BACK　　　CONTENTS　　　NEXT